The Boxer from Shantung

Ma Yongzhen comes to Shanghai from Shandong with no money and starts as a dock labourer. The city is divided among gangs and the only way up is to fight. Ma fights well. He soon gathers his own men, takes a district and begins sitting at the tables. As he rises he moves away from his old friends, and at a certain point understands that he will be brought down too. Chang Cheh directs, working with Pao Hsueh-li. Chen Kuan-tai plays Ma. It was made at the Shaw Brothers studio. The shape is the gangster film joined to martial arts cinema; the Shanghai of the thirties, the clubs and the docks come straight from the American form. Chang Cheh is taken as the director who established the male hero in Hong Kong cinema, and works the same themes here: loyalty, blood brotherhood and inevitable death. The teahouse fight at the end is among the most cited scenes in the genre. Wounded in the stomach, Ma goes on fighting with an axe, and the scene is held long. The level of violence was high for its time and the film counts as a threshold in Hong Kong cinema for that reason. Chen Kuan-tai became known through the part and it began a long career. Who it is for: viewers who like Shaw Brothers martial arts films and the gangster shape. Who it is not for: it runs long, the middle repeats, and the women have almost no function in the narrative.